It had proved a swift comradery between us and our young Oneidas, and I marvelled at the rapid accomplishment of such friendly accord in so brief a time, yet understood it came through the perfect faith of these Oneidas in their young Athabasca witch; and that what their prophetess found good they did not even think of questioning.
Her voice was soft, her smile bewitching; she ate with the healthy appetite of an animal, yet was polite to those who offered meat. And her sweet "neah-wennah"[9] never failed any courtesy offered by these rough Forest Runners, who now, for the first time in their reckless lives, I think, were afforded a glimpse of the forest Indian as he really is when at his ease and among friends.
For it is not true that the Iroquois live perpetually in their paint; that they are cruel by nature, brutal, stern, and masters of silence; or that they stalk gloomily through life with hatchet ever loosened and no pursuit except war in their ferocious minds.
White men who have mistreated them see them so; but the real Iroquois, except the Senecas, who are different, are naturally a kindly, merry, and trustful people among themselves, not quarrelsome, not fierce, but like children, loving laughter and all things gay and bright and mischievous.
Their women, though sometimes broad in speech and jests, are more truly chaste in conduct than the women of any nation I ever heard of, except the Irish.
They have their fixed and honourable places in clan, nation, and Federal affairs.
Rank follows the female line; the son of a chief does not succeed to the antlers, but any of his mother's relatives may. And in the Great Rite of the Iroquois, which is as sacred to them as is our religion to us, and couched in poetry as beautiful as ever Homer sang, the most moving part of the ceremony concerns the Iroquois women,—the women of the Six Nations of the Long House, respected, honoured, and beloved.
We ate leisurely, feeling perfectly secure there in the starlight of the soft June night.
The Iroquois war-trail ran at our elbows, trodden a foot deep, hard as a sheep path, and from eighteen inches to two feet in width—a clean, firm, unbroken trail through a primeval wilderness, running mile after mile, mile after mile, over mountains, through valleys, by lonely lakes, along lost rivers, to the distant Canadas in the North.